Sometimes the hardest thing to give is your heart.
Malik Williams has built his life around service, not love. Ruggedly handsome and fiercely dedicated, the director of multiple Manhattan community centers believes his purpose is helping others—not risking his heart. Growing up without a family taught Malik to rely on himself, and he’s determined never to need anyone.
Sometimes the hardest thing to give is your heart.
Malik Williams has built his life around service, not love. Ruggedly handsome and fiercely dedicated, the director of multiple Manhattan community centers believes his purpose is helping others—not risking his heart. Growing up without a family taught Malik to rely on himself, and he’s determined never to need anyone.
Dr. Peyton Sawyer knows love’s power—and its cost. A widowed professor starting over with an assistant professorship at NYU, Peyton is committed to making a difference in her students’ lives while keeping her guarded heart firmly protected. When her work brings her into Malik’s orbit, neither expects the instant spark that flares between them.
Drawn together by shared values and undeniable chemistry, Malik wants to move fast. Peyton, burdened by grief and guilt, pulls back. As their connection deepens through late conversations, shared purpose, and stolen moments, Malik begins to open up—only for the past to come crashing back.
A chance encounter with the abusive stepfather who once terrorized Malik threatens everything he’s worked for. When the man offers funding for Malik’s beloved Harlem community center in exchange for control, Malik must confront the trauma he’s buried for years. At the same time, Peyton faces danger of her own when her efforts to help a vulnerable student place her in harm’s way.
As fear, love, and unfinished wounds collide, Malik must decide whether he’s willing to face his past to claim a future. And Peyton must choose whether love is worth the risk—this time, for real.
This Time for Real delivers an emotionally layered romance centered on healing, resilience, and the courage it takes to love again. With compassion, authenticity, and deep emotional insight, Yahrah St. John tells a powerful story of love after loss—where confronting the past becomes the first step toward a lasting future.
A slightly dark second chance romance set in the Irish Wolves World, about a hospitality consultant hired to open a club in the heart of Rome with a twisted secret hidden below.
Jo should have been leery when she found out the name of her client’s new club: Veleno—poison in Italian. Each floor was an ode to snakes... foreshadowing 101.
Jilted and betrayed by love, Josephine O’Connor jumps at the chance to fly to Rome to work on a new club for her parents’ hospitality business. A big project means less time to miss the MacGregor who tore her heart out. As if dealing with that betrayal isn’t enough, she finds a mysterious room at her new work site—a room she was clearly never meant to see…
On top of that, the man who hurt her when she was eighteen has returned, bringing up traumatic memories from the past that she’d prefer to leave buried.
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From acclaimed author Elizabeth Essex comes the adventurous first book in the Highland Brides, a quartet of bold, brilliant lasses determined to make their own happily ever afters.
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It's a mad, ill-advised journey that leads the usually sensible Lady Caroline Blacknall to the legendary isle of Muirin Inish, off the windswept coast of Ireland. Even so, she doesn't expect to find herself shipwrecked and then rescued by a man she believed she would never see again. A man who, long ago, held her life in his hands . . . and with it, her heart.
Reformed rake Sir Grant Dunmore knew he could never forget the beautiful woman he once endangered nor will he ever forgive himself. But history seems doomed to repeat itself, for as long as Caroline stays on the island, she is trapped in a secret plot that could forever free Ireland-or turn deadly for all. And yet, now that she is in his arms again, how can he dream of ever letting her go?
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